


driver's ed

by deniigiq



Series: finding the lost verse + [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Din's mysterious childhood starts to emerge from the depths, Driving, Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Space Flight, Teaching, also Leia smashes every landing she's presented with
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 10:40:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29823690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: About eight or so years ago, Han had tried to teach Leia how to fly, and coincidentally, about eight or so years ago, Han had banned Leia from the cockpit of every craft he had access to.(Din takes a swing at teaching Leia how to fly. Luke comes along to backseat drive.)
Relationships: Din Djarin & Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker, Din Djarin/Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker
Series: finding the lost verse + [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2192382
Comments: 22
Kudos: 329





	driver's ed

**Author's Note:**

> I'm just playing in the space now guys. I don't know star wars shit and don't care to, but thanks so for your indulgence. 
> 
> I've also started stuffing these little spin offs into a side series for **finding the lost and losing the found** so if you want to have the backstory behind how Din and Luke got together in this verse, go ahead and read that one. It's mostly lighthearted.

About eight or so years ago, Han had tried to teach Leia how to fly, and coincidentally, about eight or so years ago, Han had banned Leia from the cockpit of every craft he had access to.

Luke hadn’t believed him when he said that he was done with trying to teach her for good and forever. He had thought, like a fool, that he’d have better luck.

Maybe it had been too much faith in their twin bond. Maybe it had been hubris.

The result was the same.

If Leia thought that she was putting so much as a toe over the cockpit threshold while Luke was sat at the controls, she had another thing coming. The closest he’d let her to the console was the back right seat. That was it. That was as far into a corner as he could feasibly get her while still allowing her to see what was happening.

And so was established the present the order of operations that occurred on every family trip off of Yavin:

Step 1. Gather in front of the chosen vehicle.

Step 2. Board.

Step 3. Strap in Ben.

Step 4. Locate, disarm, and manhandle Leia into the seat next to Ben.

Step 5. Proceed with all other preparatory measures as usual.

This order of operations worked fine--great, even--until the family expanded.

Din and Grogu had their own pre- and in-flight procedures. They were haphazard. They were chaotic. They bore next to no resemblance to the word ‘safety’ and instead an alarming resemblance to a duck and cover drill, but you know what? Luke was willing to look past that because Din was a good pilot.

For all crafts? No. No, Din could successfully pilot about seven different types of ship before he started literally winging it.

Thankfully, his version of winging it was at least informed.

Sort of.

Kind of.

Alright, maybe Luke had more faith in Din’s natural ability to improvise than he did in his piloting, but that was not the issue at hand.

The issue at hand was Leia. Leia who had one single time seen Din take the controls from Luke so that Luke could go talk to her in the main cabin. That tiny misstep was enough to remind her that _she_ wasn’t allowed to take the controls when she flew with Luke.

The jealousy had crashed over Luke like a seawall in a tsunami, which was how they’d gotten here. Right here. With Din waving Luke and Han off dismissively, saying that he’d teach the lady, no problem.

Luke snatched Grogu from his arms right after he finished that sentence. There was no way in hell he was letting the child on board alongside the toxic combination before him.

Din asked Leia what she knew about flying.

She said that she knew which way was down and that crashing was not optimal.

Din cleared her for takeoff.

“Relax,” he said while Han and Luke and Chewie crunched together and tried to practice deep breathing as one single body. “I got stuck on Paz’s first flight post-helmet and let me tell you: nothing will ever top that.”

Han told him not to underestimate Leia’s abilities. Whoever ‘Paz’ was, his record was sure to be beaten.

“I dunno about that,” Din said, giving Leia boost up into the ship’s entrance. “It took Paz twelve times to figure out how to land. The only thing that saved him was our oldest guy finding the mechanic’s pre-written homicide confession before the thirteenth try.”

With every little nugget of Din’s covert childhood came a new bout of indigestion. Luke was starting to regret having ever asked him to open up about it.

“Maybe shoot for a slightly higher goal, then,” Han suggested as Din hauled himself up into the Rust Bucket after Leia.

“I’ll take it under advisement,” Din said before closing the hatch.

Luke was rattling, rattling, rattling out here on the ground. If he looked up and squinted, he could just see Leia through the cockpit’s hazy windshield. She was pointing at things and talking. Presumably, Din was answering her.

God, what a way for those two to meet in person.

“Should we clear back?” Han asked Luke and Chewie.

Luke looked up at him and then back to the ship. He looked up again and then back again.

“Luke,” Han drawled. “Luke, buddy, let’s not. Just this once.”

Luke shoved Grogu into his arms.

Din told him to stop breaking into the ship for the eighth time, but Luke ignored him to scramble into Grogu’s usual seat.

He strapped every strap he could strap and gripped the sides of the seat as tight as his hands would allow.

His knees wanted nothing more than to bounce into oblivion.

He was aware that Din was looking back at him while Leia asked where the brake was. He did not look back. He trained his gaze out the windshield at Han. Han met his eye and then shook his head sadly. Chewie pulled him back. Han set Grogu down and followed him. Grogu turned around and gave a little wave.

Luke felt a tear threatening to fall.

He pried a hand from the side of the seat and waved back.

“Alright, I’m ready,” Leia said.

“Perfect, just one thing,” Din said.

Luke was already hyperventilating and all Din had done was raise Leia’s seat.

She’d never been more ready.

“I’m your co-pi,” Din explained out loud—possibly more for Luke’s benefit than hers. “So if things start going south, I’ll be there to get us back on course.”

Leia wriggled in delight. Luke swore her feet didn’t touch the ground.

“Got it,” she said.

“What’s the first thing we do?” Din asked her.

“Floor it,” she said.

“No,” Din said. “Safety checks.”

“Right. Safety checks. That’s what I said. Luke, stop making that noise. I’m trying to focus.”

Luke hadn’t realized he was making one, but apparently that high-pitched rasping shriek was him.

“Safety checks,” Din said again with immense patience. “Check all your lights.”

“Lights checked,” Leia said.

“All of them?” Din asked.

There was a pause. Luke resisted the urge to pull his knees up to his face.

“That one’s fucked up,” Leia said, pointing. “Why’s it fucked up?”

“Good noticing,” Din said. “It’s always fucked up, you can ignore it on here, but don’t ignore it on other crafts.”

LEIA, YOU MADE DIN SAY ‘FUCK.’ GET OUT OF HERE.

“LUKE, Shut. UP.”

He buried himself into his arms and tried not to weep.

Somehow, lift-off was achieved. And only with moderate turbulence and intervention on Din’s part to keep the Rust Bucket from losing its tail.

Luke’s blood pressure started to come down when they were airborne. So far, not too bad. He peeked out from his arms and found all to be peaceful. He looked behind himself as far as the straps would allow and found the cockpit still attached to the rest of the ship.

Thank God.

“Good,” Din said ahead. “You’re a natural.”

Leia preened.

Luke balked.

A greater lie had never been told.

“Alright, so now the fun part,” Din said. “I’m going to hand over all controls.”

DIN, NO.

“Copy that,” Leia said. “I’ve got this.”

DIN—

“And I’m going to put your brother in a box,” Din said. “If you’ll excuse me.”

In hindsight, it was probably embarrassing to have such a marital dispute in front of one’s sister, but that didn’t matter because Luke was _not_ sitting in the main cabin with Leia in the pilot’s seat with all controls. Hell. NO.

Never. Uh-uh. Nice try, buckethead. This ass is moving _nowhere_.

Din knelt down in front of him and took his hand. He squeezed it firmly.

“You are the most dramatic person I have ever met,” he said. “And I value this part of you. But if you don’t settle, then you’re going to make this difficult for everyone.”

Luke scowled.

Leia gloated harder than she ever had.

“You heard your hubbie, _Luke_ ,” she said. “Settle.”

Fuck you, senator.

“No, fuck _you¸_ farmboy.”

Oh?? Oh that was how they were going to play it, _princess?_

“Children,” Din said. “You’re both pretty.”

Oof, ouch. Forgot people were watching. Right, okay, point taken. Luke curled up against the harness over his chest and glared out the edge of the windshield closest to him. Din’s hand squeezed his shoulder as he stood up.

“Have a little faith,” he said affectionately. “Flying a ship is much easier than step two.”

Luke’s head snapped back to Din at the same time Leia’s did.

“What?” they said at the same time.

Leia was getting a little nervous plugging coordinates into the Rust Bucket with no context for where they lead. Luke could feel it through the Force. He wanted to reach out and touch her to let her know that it was okay, but he had maybe been a little overenthusiastic with the harness earlier. He flailed, reaching as far as he could go, but neither of the others noticed or turned around and his jerking made the straps lock up.

He sagged back into the seat and wondered if this was what Grogu felt like when Luke and Din set him up in this seat for trips from Yavin.

It sucked.

On Grogu’s behalf, Luke was making a harness cover, if, for nothing else, to cover all the edges of the thing that were digging into his sides.

“Ready?” Din asked Leia.

“Nope,” Leia said.

“You’ll be fine,” Din said, “She shakes, though, so hold on and don’t let go. You’ll get used to it. On my count.”

Leia squeaked and clung to the joystick in front of her.

“One,” Din said.

“Two.”

Luke shook his muscles loose and let his head fall back against the seat.

“Entering hyperdrive, _now_.”

The Rust Bucket shook like a leaf in a hurricane for the first few moments of entering hyperdrive; Luke was used to it. Din had fixed the stabilizers so many times in front of him that he knew that they’d hold, rocky as they were.

The Rust Bucket would stay together--not that Leia knew that.

She’d gone white as a sheet.

“Stay forward,” Din directed, reaching over to nudge her hands even. “Dips aren’t good here.”

Luke made a point of saying that he was impressed with his sibling. She glanced back at him just as the shaking started to taper off. Luke gave her a smile. Her eyes snapped back forward.

“I’ve got this,” she said.

“You’re doing fine,” Din said. “Jhuvac nearly got us all killed at this point on her first run.”

Jhuvac?

“An older trainee,” Din said. “She’s like my sister.”

Older? Wait.

“Wasn’t Paz older too?” Luke asked.

Din huffed and nudged Leia’s hands again.

“They’re all older,” he said. “I’m the youngest in my generation at the covert.”

Oh, awwww. That was so cute.

“So you backseat drove for all of them?” Luke asked. “Is that how you learned to pilot?”

Din considered it, then got distracted as they exited hyperdrive and pulled onto the course set by the ship’s tracker. Leia followed it like a child given a piece of chalk and a slate the size of a small pond. Din had to lean over the console stabbing him in the gut and use both hands to get them back on course.

Luke clung to the harness and tried to keep his feet on the floor.

“No,” Din finally answered when they were again upright and Leia was cheering at the spare wires that were raining down from the overhead compartment, “I was too young to fit in the cockpit harnesses back then; they had me in the back for cross checks and flight protocol. When it was my turn, our mechanic, Vok, started me on a bike and worked me up to a crawler. His rule was that you had to successfully roll a crash wagon before you could sit behind the controls of any of his crafts.”

 _Roll_ a crash wagon? A crash wagon as in the support vehicle? Like an ambulance?

Din turned back to him with an unreadable helmet.

Luke got the point.

“This is the same mechanic who got caught trying to murder Paz,” he clarified.

“The one and only,” Din confirmed. “He’s five years my senior.”

So he was what, twenty-two when all of this went down?

“19.”

“You were 14 when they set you on cross checks?” Leia asked. “Isn’t that a little young?”

“I mean, Paz was 16 flying the ship,” Din said. “I don’t know if anyone on board was over twenty at that point.”

That sounded like a disaster waiting to happen.

“It was fine,” Din said, flicking on his controls to steer The Rust Bucket back onto the charted course. He turned them off again when Leia told him that she knew what she was doing.

“Our parents checked in with us every hour or so,” Din said dismissively. “Everyone’s got to try to learn.”

Luke couldn’t argue with that and especially not with Leia smirking at him.

“Has Luke ever told you about his flight suit?” she asked.

Luke scowled. Din cocked his helmet to the side.

“You have a flightsuit?” he asked Luke.

No, Luke did _not_. He’d grown up. He’d moved on to greener pastures.

“It’s orange. Got a helmet, too,” Leia said. “You get him in it and you two can kiss properly sometime.”

All this blackmail and Luke had nothing to even throw at her since Din had divested Grogu’s seat of its usual projectiles. This was cruelty beyond words.

“He blew up the Death Star in it,” Leia explained to Din.

Din absorbed this information. Luke flattened a hand over his face.

“Leia, he doesn’t know what that is,” he mumbled.

Leia gazed into Din’s visor with nothing but love on her face.

“I want to study you so bad,” she said.

“Eyes front,” Din told her.

She wriggled back to facing forward absolutely beaming. Luke dropped his head against the side of the wall.

Leia’s adventures in smooth sailing were cut short by Din announcing that they were going to drop down into the atmosphere of the planet he’d given Leia coordinates for.

He tried to walk Leia through the procedure for not turning them all into a raging ball of fire.

She caught only half of the steps.

The following fall was like dropping into an abyss.

Luke swore he saw Obi Wan on the way down. He was laughing. Of course he was laughing.

He himself felt like the wind had been knocked out of him when Din snapped on controls and caught the poor Bucket mid-tragic descent. He clung to the harness and tried to breathe. Not because he wanted to, but because the other option was for Leia to have killed him.

She landed the hunk of junk like the piece of shit that it was. Even Din cringed as the thing hovered five feet over the planet’s surface and then dropped out of the air like a stone.

It landed so obscenely that Luke felt the little marble of hope that Yoda claimed he’d seen in him come loose in his head. Din shivered when Leia spun around his way for a grade.

He asked her if Han ever picked her up.

She said Han knew better.

Din told her to hop on outside. She left them and Luke broke the resulting silence by unclicking his harness.

“That was something,” he said. “Kudos to you for attaining non-lethal lift off with her.”

Din stood up.

“I’m about to piss off your sister,” he said. “Apologies in advance.”

“No, no, whatever it is, she deserves it,” Luke told him.

Din had brought them to a planet made out of hard, bluish gray stone. Waves of it rose up around them like an undulating ocean, occasionally crested by ragged pale peaks.

He picked Leia up outside and dropped her on her ass right onto the rock.

She got up and punched him in the gut. It went poorly for her. That was beskar there, and she didn’t have the benefit of a metal hand.

Sucker.

Din watched her dance and swear in a circle around him and asked her how it felt to be dropped from a height.

Bad, it turned out.

He then asked her how she thought the fucking ship felt.

She got the message. She promised to come in slower next time. He told her to walk off the pain; there was something here that he wanted to check out.

Din’s idea of a mission well done was always, without exception, finding a huge monster and making it his mortal enemy. Luke surveyed the rock plain for any signs of one, on the off-chance that Din was in the business of tiring Leia out this afternoon.

There was nothing obvious, though. The landscape was flat. It was blue. It was innocent.

Luke trusted nothing and no one.

Din told him to go play in the water. He’d heard there were salamanders on this planet, and he knew how much Luke liked anything that could possibly be poisonous. Luke decided that that was a compliment and ignored the judgmental tone sat just behind the words.

“Don’t worry, I’ll bring you back a snack, babe,” he called over his shoulder.

“Take your sister,” Din said.

Luke realized now that he was a distraction while Din tracked a bounty into a cave somewhere up on the hillside.

This fucking guy.

It was always business with him. Just for one day, Luke would like—oh, hello?

Hello? Hello?

“What are they?” Leia asked when Luke joined her at the edge of a gushing, shallow river filled with blotchy black and yellow salamanders.

“Friends,” Luke said delightedly.

Leia grabbed his arm before he could get it into the water. She made him use the other one, (“in case they bite, dumbass”) but there was nothing to be afraid of. The salamander crawling up Luke’s arm was cold and sticky, but that was it. No venom. No biting. Its tiny claws tickled as it made a rapid journey to the back of his neck where it curled in and flattened its belly.

It started purring.

Leia reached up and petted it.

“I have a bad idea,” she sang to it.

Oh? Do share.

Din was hunting, looking between rocks and doing his best tin-can impression while trying to shimmy up the cliff face. He was up too high for this to work.

Leia told Luke not to give up so soon, for they had a super power and it was called ‘stacking.’

Din found a crack in the rock in front of him and got his arms far enough over the edge of it to start feeling around. There was a sliver of skin at the back of his neck, right where his cape ended and his helmet began.

It was salamander-sized. Exactly salamander sized.

The only challenge here was being stealthy. Luke bit his lip to keep from squeaking at the feeling of Leia’s boots digging into his shoulders.

Din huffed at whatever was (or perhaps wasn’t) in the rock’s shallow cave and pulled back out just enough for the back of his helmet to come within Leia’s reach.

She expertly deposited the amphibian.

Well, this sucked.

“Stay,” Din said with a finger in Luke’s face in the exact same tone he used with Grogu when he locked him into this very seat.

“Stay,” Din then told Leia who’d met the same fate, but in the co-pilot’s seat.

He shut the cockpit door behind him and the prisoners both sulked through the sound of the ship’s main cabin door creaking shut.

“It was worth it,” Leia said over her shoulder.

Luke stared at the knots keeping her in place and wondered if it really was.

It took about five minutes into an enforced time out for them both to remember that Luke was a jedi.

Freedom was abandoning ship and getting caught a second time trying to acquire another salamander for crimes against Mandalorians.

Freedom was _not_ being dragged along a cliff face only to discover a fault line that opened up into an eye about the size of the Rust Bucket.

 _There_ was the huge monster. Luke had found it.

And for the record, Luke was sorry now, too. He wouldn’t do it again.

He wouldn’t even sniff at a salamander so long as he lived if it meant that the roaring creature currently choking down Din’s once-wanted smuggler’s body did not do the same to any of their current party.

Din told him to save the apology and _get in the pilot’s seat_. He told Leia that now was her opportunity for a crash course in getting the hell out of a situation gone about as bad as it could go.

The salamander king apparently heard that. It finished its snack. Its legs, stubby for its body but the size of ancient tree stumps, stomped around hard enough to crack the rock underneath them.

It screeched.

Luke strapped in and ripped back the emergency brake.

“Alright,” he called to Leia in the co-pilot’s seat, “You might want a helmet.”

Luke would never call himself a great pilot--that was asking for trouble. What he _would_ say about his skillset in that area was that, where Din had his seven or so types of ships and/or vehicles that he could successfully maneuver, he himself had oh, say, thirty-four.

Maybe thirty-five.

Luke didn’t really keep track.

It was his impression however, thanks mostly to Han’s filthy mouth, that Din found this fact about him highly attractive. 

Din refused to confirm or deny, but Luke did not fail to notice that he’d found himself suddenly horizontal and _very_ busy in the sleeping compartment in the aftermath of adventures involving some rather tricky maneuvering. One more time, Han claimed, and they’d moving from hypothesis to theory territory.

This adventure wasn’t going to be the straw that broke that camel’s back, unfortunately. It wasn’t like either of previous two; there were no ice caves, for one, and for two, they still had both wings.

In that sense, it was a walk in the park, which made it a perfect opportunity for a rookie to shoot their shot, so to speak. The only real job here was to keep them all headed in the simple direction of ‘up,’ so it only made sense for Luke to hand off controls about halfway through a strong ascent.

Leia didn’t notice until the angle of ascent started to die off. Then she experienced that brief moment of panic that all good pilots held near and dear to their hearts.

It was only a tiny plummet in the grander scheme of things. And Luke was proud of Leia for regaining her calm quickly enough to connect the dots of ‘gravity sucks,’ ‘this angle is steep,’ and ‘this button makes the engine _roar_.’

It was all instinct, baby. Look at that natural talent. Where had it been hiding this whole time?

Probably under the death threats that Luke was now being pelted with.

Yeah, probably under them.

Han had Ben on his shoulders when they finally touched back down to Yavin, somehow with as many limbs as they’d left with. Din only winced a little when Leia dropped the Bucket the last foot or so to the ground. Han and Chewie full-body cringed with no shame.

“We found a dragon,” Leia announced as soon as the ramp went down. “We ran from it like cowards.”

“Atta girl,” Han said. “A woman after my own heart.”

“I have no need of your withered black stone— _hi, baby_ —”

\--and she was gone to smother Ben. Good for her, and good fucking riddance.

Han smirked as Luke came down the ramp. He had replaced Ben with Grogu on his shoulders now. The kid curled around his head. Han peered around Luke’s shoulders curiously.

“Where’s your husband?” he asked.

“Trying to rewire the whole overhead console, no thanks to _your_ wife,” Luke said. “She landed that thing so hard we almost kissed the engine.”

Han hunkered back a little into his shoulders.

“My most sincere apologies,” he said.

Save ‘em, Solo. They aren’t worth shit here.

“Never again,” Luke said. “Din’s too nice to put his foot down, so I’m doing it for both of us.”

Han beamed like the sun above.

“I—” he started.

“Shut up,” Luke snapped.

“I—”

“ _Han_.”

“I told you so,” Han finished brilliantly.

**Author's Note:**

> if you like shit like this, sometimes I post snippet of upcoming works on my tumblr @deniigi ❤


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